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What is a Possessive Pronoun?
A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that attributes ownership to someone or
something. Like all other pronouns, it substitutes a noun phrase, and can prevent its
repetition. For example, in the phrase, “These glasses are mine, not yours”, the words
“mine” and “yours” are possessive pronouns and stand for “my glasses”
and “your glasses”, respectively.
There are seven possessive pronouns in modern English: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs.
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Pronoun |
Adjective |
| First-Person |
Singular | mine |
my |
| Plural |
ours |
our |
| Second-Person |
Singular | Standard |
yours |
your |
| Archaic |
thine |
thy |
| Plural | Standard |
yours |
your |
| Archaic |
yours |
your |
| Nonstandard |
y'all's / yous's |
y'all's |
| Third-Person |
Singular | Masculine |
his |
his |
| Feminine |
hers |
her |
| Neuter |
its |
its |
| Plural |
theirs |
their |
Some languages have neither possessive pronouns nor possessive adjectives, and express possession by
declining the personal pronouns in the genitive or possessive case, or by using possessive suffixes.
In Finnish, for example, minun (“I's”), means “mine” or “my”.
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